Pacifica Radio reporter puts special spin on convention

David Armstrong, EXAMINER MEDIA WRITER

Published 4:00 am, Monday, August 12, 1996

Pacifica Radio national affairs correspondent Larry Bensky has been covering national political conventions since 1972. But unlike many other veteran reporters, who expect little of consequence to emerge from this year's orchestrated conventions, Berkeley-based Bensky maintains the conventions are still far from boring or irrelevant.

Speaking Sunday by telephone from Southern California, where he was shuttling between the Republican confab in San Diego and the Reform Party's meeting in Long Beach, Bensky said, "For me, conventions are extremely important. They show who is active, what direction things are going in, what spin they're putting on things."

Bensky, who will also report from the Democratic convention in Chicago later this month, doubles as a reporter and commentator for noncommercial Pacifica, whose local outlet is KPFA (FM 94.1). He goes on the air live at 6 a.m., files taped reports for Pacifica's 6 p.m. newscasts, then co-anchors convention coverage from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

On microphone and off, Bensky provides an acerbic, alternative spin on American politics and media.

Noting that the GOP has adopted platform planks that call for the repeal of the "motor voter" act, an end to American Bar Association assessment of judges, and new

"peer-review risk assessment" of workplace safety that would transfer responsibility from government to corporations, Bensky sees the 1996 Republican platform as a deeply radical document.

In Bensky's view, religious right-wingers have tightened their grip on the GOP. As such, he sees "the obvious withering away of the presidential establishment, as represented by Ronald Reagan, George Bush and, ostensibly, Bob Dole."

Observes Bensky: "This is the most extreme ideological tilt to a party platform that I can remember in 20 years of covering conventions."

Bensky says Pacifica's coverage will emphasize these and related points, such as what Bensky contends is the mainstream media's failure to scrutinize Republican vice-presidential choice Jack Kemp.

"If the media do their job and examine who Jack Kemp is," Bensky asserts, "his balloon will deflate very quickly." &lt;